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Bacon Meme of the Week
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Faculty Bloat at UVa
by James A. BaconA key cost driver at the University of Virginia is the increasing size and declining teaching productivity of its faculty. The topic appears to be taboo.
The Board of Visitors hasn’t discussed it, and there is no indication from publicly available sources that the university administration has engaged in any introspection. The slender evidence available to the UVa community is found on the website of UVa’s office of Institutional Research & Analytics (IR&A), a 17-person office deep within the bowels of the university. While that office does publish limited data online, it has not released any reports of an analytical nature.
Employee salaries, wages and benefits comprise roughly half of the university’s cost structure. While a 25.4% surge in salaried staff accounts for much of the growth in UV’s cost structure between fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2022 (see our article, “Hard Numbers on Administrative Bloat“), a 9.5% increase in “faculty” was a significant contributor as well. If we count teaching faculty only (tenure-track professors, lecturers and instructors) and exclude departmental-level administrators, whose numbers have been slashed, the “faculty” headcount bounded ahead by 25.7%.
By contrast, annualized FTE enrollment rose 8.8%. (more…)
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Loudoun Supervisors Defend Exorbitant Junkets
by Ram Venkatachalam Until recently, members of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors haven’t tried to sell themselves as international diplomats and business development experts. They aren’t.
Nor do we have a long history of waste, fraud, and abuse when it comes to how members of local government spend our tax dollars, especially for money budgeted for constituent services.
But now four Democrat members of the Board have been caught red-handed in the biggest local government scandal in decades. This is what Entitlement looks like.
This year alone, Chair Phyliss Randall, and Supervisors Juli Briskman, Sylvia Glass, and Koran Saines have violated their oath of office by diverting nearly $100,000 in taxpayer money (that we know of) for first-class travel for themselves and others to Ghana and Uruguay. They even purchased a pricey camera to take pictures of themselves because it wasn’t enough to use their taxpayer-paid cell phones.
That money could have been spent to hire another elementary school teacher, firefighter, or deputy sheriff this year. Instead, it was wasted.
Our taxes paid for these four to travel with their aides, a political campaign donor and others under the guise of “sister city” partnerships – without a compelling reason, and with no return on investment.
The four supervisors did this out of a sense of entitlement, and Loudoun taxpayers paid 100% of the bill. Then, after being confronted by an investigative reporter for WJLA-TV7, they doubled down, and Chair Randall defended their actions. Many of their political allies have done the same, including Laura Tekrony, my opponent in the contest for Supervisor, Little River District. Ms. Tekrony is Chair Randall’s chief legislative aide, and her prolonged silence about the abuse is telling.
Instead of an apology or accountability from the four elected supervisors, Loudoun is being fed lies that more than $1.37 billion in investments and 2,500 local jobs resulted from these and similar “sister city” trips. In fact, the trips have produced absolutely nothing in economic benefits – zero dollars and no jobs, as documented by the county’s own records. (more…)
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Who Knew?
Henrico Doctors Hospital courtesy HCA by James C. Sherlock
I just came across a fact that surprised me considering how much I have studied Virginia hospitals.
Henrico Doctors’ Hospital with 767 beds and CJW Medical Center with 758 beds, both in Richmond, rank numbers five and six in size in the entire 180-hospital empire of HCA, the largest private hospital system in America.
Together they represent HCA’s largest market presence by far.
Go Richmond.
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Impressions from a Weekend in Charlottesville
by James C. Sherlock
Sometimes, things just force their way into your consciousness.
My wife and I were in Charlottesville this weekend. We were not there to visit the University, but its continuing construction overwhelms both the senses and attempts to get from A to B. Most of the growth is vertical — very vertical — on land that the University owns on or adjacent to the central Grounds.
Drive down Jefferson Park Avenue for a sense of the scale of it. Look straight up. Go to the intersection of Rt. 29 and 250 to see a new 14-acre complex under construction.
There is a sense that there is never to be an end to it.
There is certainly nothing to suggest a considered approach to growth in the University’s Strategic Plan. Sinclair Lewis recognized the symptoms a century ago.
No room was found in the Plan for any possibility of stopping doing something for which there is no longer sufficient demand in order to do something new in existing buildings.
Instead, University infrastructure growth seems on a self-generating loop — an idea for a new building, the land identified, a search for donors, an alumnus writes a check to buy immortality (unless the donor is later “cancelled” by the left), and voilà, some of the initial funding, if not the long-term sustaining money, is found. Skilled construction workers are brought in by the contractors who build at such scale, who then leave when the job is complete.
Replay. (more…)
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Fear and Loathing in Loudoun
Loudoun County parents pack a School Board meeting. Photo credit: Idiocracy News Media by Ian Prior
For several years, parents in Loudoun County, Virginia have been clamoring for accountability, transparency, higher standards, and safety in their schools. They haven’t been getting it, and that’s why new leadership is needed.
The brunt of the parents’ grievances has been largely directed toward the Loudoun County School Board, which has been embroiled in several scandals that remain unresolved.
In October 2021, a male student at Broad Run High School was arrested for sexual battery and abduction of a fellow student. Only a few days later, it was reported that the same student had previously committed two counts of forcible sodomy on a fellow student at Stone Bridge High School. The male assailant, who had gained access to the female bathroom on account of his claim of “gender fluidity,” is said to have been wearing a skirt during the assault.
The anxious parents in Loudoun County have been demanding answers as to why a student accused of rape was allowed to quietly transfer to another school where he reoffended. The scandal prompted an independent investigation into the tragedy. The LCSB has emphatically refused to make the resulting Independent Review available to the Loudoun parental community. (more…)
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What Global Warming? A Century of Virginia Julys
Graphing every daily high temperature for July in Purcellville, VA, more than a century of daily readings up through last month. What global warming? Click for full view. By Steve Haner
The constant media hysteria about July’s temperatures gets even harder to swallow when the long-term data are examined. For example, take a look at that graph above, which represents every daily high in July going back to the 19th Century at Purcellville in Loudoun County.
The Purcellville weather monitor is one of just 19 in Virginia with a long enough and reliable enough history to be included in National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s U.S. Historical Climatology Network. It is the closest Virginia USHCN monitor to the Washington metropolitan region, but like many of the selected monitors is not deep in an urban setting.
The graph itself was generated by a program developed by a regular writer on climate topics named Tony Heller, who spent much of his career doing research at the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories. This is mentioned because he will be attacked by the Bacon’s Rebellion usual suspects as not a real scientist or not a climate scientist. More of his background.
The graphing program can be balky (it could be my equipment or operator error), and you can try it yourself here under “Daily Station Temperatures.” You can select by state, and if you get the version that includes a box at the top marked “Annual Average,” that gives you a pulldown menu for the individual USHCN monitor stations in each state. The graph adds a trend line if you wish, which I included in my screenshots.
Running through the Virginia stations, the thought that comes to mind is, what climate change? What spike in temperatures? Most seem to be complete through all or most of last month. The media coverage has admitted that Virginia was not among the areas supposedly “broiling.” The state’s official NOAA summary claims a temperature rise of only 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900, almost 125 years. (more…)
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Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need Program – A New Sheriff in Town
by James C. Sherlock
Everywhere counterproductive to competition, innovation and cost, Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need (COPN) program also has proven antithetical to quality and safety in nursing homes.
A thorough 2022 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on improving nursing home quality had this to say about state Certificate of Need (CON) programs:
Certificate-of-need regulations and construction moratoria do not appear to have had their intended effect of holding down Medicaid nursing home spending; rather, these laws can discourage innovation and decrease access.
Certificate-of-need regulations may contribute to the perpetuation of larger nursing homes.
Despite the prominent role of nursing home oversight and regulation, the evidence base for its effectiveness in ensuring a minimum standard of quality is relatively modest.
The role of Virginia’s COPN program is as counterproductive to nursing home quality as is imaginable. Remember, COPN decisions happen before the state and federal regulators of the operations of nursing homes even get into the game.
Virginia’s COPN program is a statutory incumbent protection regime across all of its regulated targets. But it has gotten especially bad results with nursing homes, which by nearly every measure are among the worst in America.
In Virginia, the only realistic way to increase the size of a nursing facility is by COPN approval of the transfer of beds from one facility to another, often from one region of the state to another. (more…)
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Washington Post Gotcha’s Another GOP Candidate
by Victoria Snitsar ChurchillDespite The Washington Post‘s attempts to paint him as an anti-woman radical, Republican nominee for the House of Delegates 21st District John Stirrup of Prince William County makes a compelling case for his District to elect him to the open seat this November.
According to The Washington Post, “Stirrup told a woman who had approached him after a Republican primary debate on May 18th” … that he would … “support a 100 percent ban,” according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. In another recording, made June 20, he told a man he met outside a polling place that “I’d like to see, you know, [a] total ban.”
Made surreptitiously by two abortion rights supporters posing as abortion foes, the recordings seem intended to pin Stirrup down on an issue that Republicans in some swing districts would like to sidestep but Democrats hope to make a rallying cry in Nov. 7 General Assembly elections.
Balancing one’s personal views with the views of a constituency is a game that elected officials have to play often and well.
Stirrup’s remarks shouldn’t be seen as a backtrack, regardless of the attempts to paint him as a flip-flopper by The Post. (more…)
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Who Are Those Rich Men North of Richmond? And What Is Youngkin Up To?
by Shaun KenneyFirst things are first. I’m almost certain you have heard “Try That In a Small Town” by Jason Aldean. Good for a week, right?
If you want to hear true protest music? Allow me to introduce you to the bluegrass of Oliver Anthony:
Give these lyrics a try:
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
‘Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
‘Cause of rich men north of RichmondHoly wow.
People aren’t just angry — there is open resentment out there, folks. Whatever is working isn’t working for working-class people and they are making their voices heard in ways that work around legacy media. (more…)
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NJ Democrats Tacking Away from Wind Power
by Steve HanerFirst published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.
Virginia is one of only two states that hold their major legislative elections this odd-numbered year, with the other being New Jersey. In New Jersey, the state’s offshore wind aspirations have become a major political issue, with even Democrats now starting to question the wisdom of the plan.
The Democrats control new Jersey, so it is noteworthy that both leading Democratic legislators, the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate, signed a joint statement expressing concern about “unanswered questions” as the state’s Board of Public Utilities goes full speed ahead on its wind projects. The turnabout is even more dramatic because the same legislators just weeks ago voted to give the private wind developers of the first project a more profitable deal at ratepayer expense. The company was one of those complaining its project was not financially feasible under the original terms.
New Jersey has become a major hotspot for political opposition to offshore wind, in part because the planned projects are often closer to shore and will be more visible from beach homes and tourist areas than the project off Virginia Beach. There is also more focus in that media market on the unexplained spike in whale deaths, now reportedly up to 60 since December of last year.
The same questions of cost and tourism impact remain unanswered in Virginia, but so far there is no sign many candidates are seeking to enter the legislature with promises to reverse course on our $10 billion project, if that is possible at this point. Dominion Energy Virginia intends to build a second wave of turbines, however, and the next few General Assembly sessions will have every opportunity to change the rules for that tranche. (more…)
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Hard Numbers on Administrative Bloat
That bloated feeling. Image credit: Microsoft Image Creator by James A. Bacon
A number of University of Virginia Board of Visitors members have expressed concern about UVa’s runaway costs. Administrative bloat has swollen the university’s cost structure, they say, and higher costs have been cited in turn to justify tuition increases. So far, the fiscal hawks have been unable to force a discussion of the topic during regular board meetings. Indeed, simple requests for data on headcounts and salary costs have gone unanswered.
The refusal of UVa leadership to share the data is all the more remarkable in that the statistics are readily available. Indeed, much of it is maintained on the UVa website by the office of Institutional Research & Analytics (IR&A). The 17 members of the IR&A staff have the mission of supporting “the University community” — which, presumably, includes the Board of Visitors — in “assessment, planning, and decision-making.”
As it turns out, the IR&A data confirm the suspicions of the fiscal hawks. Between the 2011-12 academic year and the 2021-22 year, UVa’s academic division (excluding the healthcare division) saw the ranks of salaried staff grow dramatically — at twice the pace of faculty — even as enrollment barely budged.
Student enrollment (full-time-equivalent): +8.8%
Total faculty: +9.5%
Total salaried staff: +25.4%
(more…)
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Raw Working-Class Anthem By Farmville’s Oliver Anthony Goes Viral
by Kerry Dougherty
Move over, Jason Aldean, there’s a new country singer on the move.
Meet Oliver Anthony of Farmville, Va., a former factory worker whose plaintive, working-class anthem, “Rich Men North Of Richmond,” went viral in just two days, catapulting this unknown country Virginia singer from obscurity into a viral sensation. It went to #1 on the iTunes chart last week, moving faster than Aldean’s, “Try That In A Small Town.”
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin’ in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all
Just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
‘Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
‘Cause of rich men north of Richmond
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Jeanine’s Memes
From The Bull Elephant
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JLARC Report: More Than Just “Mo’ Money”
Photo credit: Va. Dept of Education by Dick Hall-Sizemore
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) released a major report last month on the Commonwealth’s K-12 funding formula. The responses were predictable.
On Bacon’s Rebellion, Jim Bacon dismissed the report as a cry for “mo’ money.” Democrats in the General Assembly seized upon the report and its findings as more ammunition in their fight against Governor Youngkin’s effort to cut taxes further.
It is true that the report concludes that the state needs to provide more funding for K-12. However, the report is much more than that. In the report, JLARC documents serious deficiencies in the formula that is used to calculate funding for K-12. It then proposes some significant changes that could be made that would improve the funding system. The report deserves a deeper look on this blog than it has received. (more…)
